The Outsider (12 page)

“There’s an idea,” Hope said. “I never thought of that, but it works sometimes with little white kids who’ve grown up Injun. It worked with you.”

“I lived with the Indians, but I hadn’t turned Indian.” Brice looked toward Hope. “And I wasn’t kidnapped away. You bought me.”

“I ain’t sure we’ve got enough money to make them give up my girl.”

“No.” Brice moved out into the yard and sat down on a stump. He didn’t want to be close enough to hear what they were saying in the cabin. Hope followed him. “It wouldn’t work anyway. Your daughter wasn’t stolen or bought into the Shakers, and she can’t be stolen away or bought back. It’s just not that easy.”

“I guess as how you’re right.” Hope put his pipe in his mouth and squatted down beside Brice. He puffed on his pipe a few times before he said, “Me and the boy, we done give up. We tried and she said no. I don’t figure on trying no more, and the boy’s done got the sound of war ringing in his ears.”

“And whose fault is that?” Brice said.

“I was just trying to get his mind off ’n his troubles. I wasn’t meaning no harm to the boy.”

“He’d be better off with the Shakers than following you off to war.”

“Could be you’re right. Could be my girl is better off there than with me too.”

“Could be,” Brice said.

“And could not be, right, Doc? So what do you say? Have you give up?”

Brice stared at the cabin. The light of the fire and candles seeped out through the cracks in the chinking between the logs to be swallowed up by the dark. Had he given up? He hadn’t been to the Shaker village for days, hadn’t even been close to Gabrielle since the night she’d come to his cabin for the child. He’d been busy. There’d been sickness in the town. He’d nursed two children through the fever, but he’d lost the third in spite of everything he’d done.

Still, even while he was fighting the Grim Reaper for the lives of the little ones, Gabrielle had been with him, a gentle whisper in his mind. Now with the darkness around him, it was easy to bring her image up before him. Even her sweet, clean scent was there overriding the smell of Hope’s pipe. He could never give up. Yet when he was brutally honest with himself, he could see no hope that he’d ever again feel the soft surrender of her lips under his.

“Well, Doc?” Hope asked again. “Have you?”

“I don’t suppose I can give up, Hope. I owe you.”

“That don’t matter all that much now anyhow, does it, Doc?” Brice couldn’t see Hope’s face in the dark, but he could hear the smile in his voice as he went on talking. “What was it you said about her once? That she is beauty. That says a lot.” Hope knocked his pipe out against the stump and stood up. “I guess I’ll be getting along now. Could be I’ll be back down this way in a few years.”

Brice reached for Hope’s hand in the dark and clasped it firmly. “Good luck to you, Hope.”

“I reckon if there’s any luck to be had, I’m hoping it goes with you, Doc.” Hope turned and disappeared into the trees.

Brice looked back at the cabin. The sound of the elder’s voice in a kind of chant leaked out through the chinks along with the light. Brice started to get up and go inside to put a stop to the whole bit. But then he settled back down on the stump. If the boy was going to make it on his own, he might as well start now.

Brice shut his ears to the sounds coming from the cabin and looked up at the sky. The moon was late rising, and the sky was full of stars. He liked seeing the stars and had cleared away a few more trees than necessary when he built his cabin just so more of the sky would be open. After his mother had died when he was five, he used to look up at the stars and imagine her sitting on one of them watching over him from heaven. And then when the Indians had taken him, he’d been relieved to see the same stars above his head there so his mother could keep watch over him. Thinking about her eyes on him helped him hang onto the truth of who he was.

His mother had been a churchwoman. She’d prized her Bible above all else. He could still remember the feel of her hand on his head as he knelt by his little bed and said his bedtime prayers. Then it hadn’t been hard to believe in the Lord. The Lord was in his heaven and all was right with the world. Even when a lot had gone wrong with the world, he’d been able to keep imagining the Lord cared about him.

But then Jemma had looked at him and the joy had leaked out of her eyes along with the blood her father let out of her arm in an attempt to cure her of the fever. A good, loving God wouldn’t have taken that kind of joy away from the world. The world was a cruel place and religion didn’t make it one bit less cruel. There was nothing there above him but stars. Nothing in the dark around him but more dark and maybe a bear or a panther. No Lord. No angels. A man had to make his own way.

Guilt pricked him as he stared up at the star he’d always imagined his mother sitting on. She’d be disappointed that he’d let his heart turn so cold.

A long while later the cabin door opened. Nathan laughed as the two Shakers stepped outside. The man in the back pulled the door shut and cut off the boy’s laughter. After a moment, Elder Caleb asked, “Are you here, Dr. Scott?”

Brice got up off his stump and said, “I’m here.”

They came down the steps and across the opening to where he stood. “We will leave now.”

“Without the boy?” Brice wanted them to feel their failure as he’d been feeling his own failure to reach the young sister while he waited in the dark.

“The liquor Alec Hope gave him has confused his mind. We will come back tomorrow when his mind is clearer,” Elder Caleb said. The other man, a couple of steps back, kept his head bent as the elder spoke with Brice.

“Come if you want. He’ll probably be here,” Brice said. “But I doubt it will make any difference. The boy has made up his mind.”

“I fear you helped him along this path to destruction.” It was too dark to see the elder’s face clearly, but the condemnation in his voice was strong.

“I only treated the wounds on his body. Not his mind.”

“So you say.” The elder’s voice was quiet but firm as he continued speaking. “Nevertheless it would be best if you stayed away from our village from this day on.”

Brice studied the man’s shadowy face in the dark. “What if you have sickness?”

“We have medicine to treat our own. You bring a worse sickness with you, Doctor, than any we could have. A sickness of the spirit for which you desire no cure. You are no longer welcome in our village.” Elder Caleb turned away and gestured to the other man.

Brice stood still as they walked away from him. An odd pain sprang up inside him as he felt them moving in front of his image of Gabrielle and taking her away into the night with them. He pulled her image back, but he couldn’t keep from wondering if he’d ever see her again except in his dreams.

12

Spring 1812

For weeks after he left, Nathan’s hurt look haunted Gabrielle, and she wondered what she could have done to ease his pain. She’d known for some time that Nathan had a more worldly feeling for her than she did for him, but she had never imagined he would ask her to go away with him and commit matrimony.

Gabrielle hadn’t told anyone she’d seen Nathan leave. Not even after they began to search for him. Nathan was gone. He would never come back. And she had grieved for him as the brethren spread out through the woods to search for him. Of course she knew where he’d gone. To the doctor’s cabin. Elder Caleb must have thought the same, for Sister Mercy told Gabrielle he had found Nathan there and spent hours talking with him in an attempt to make him see the folly of leaving the Believers.

“I regret to say he shut his ears to the truth,” Sister Mercy had said. “Our former brother was never one to admit an error in his ways. He refused to humble himself and learn to love the simple life.”

“He was a good worker while he was here, and perhaps he is doing what he thinks right for himself.” Gabrielle defended him. She regretted the words as soon as they were out.

Sister Mercy looked at her sharply. “What one thinks is right and what is truly right are often quite different things. I know you were close to our brother who has now left us for the world, but you mustn’t let his wrong thinking confuse you.”

“I will not.”

Sister Mercy’s eyes narrowed on Gabrielle for a moment before she said, “That is good to hear. There have been times lately when I have not been sure some bit of worldliness had not wormed its way into your thoughts, Sister Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle lowered her eyes. “I have prayed that it not be so.”

“Yea, child, prayer is the right and proper thing to do when we have spiritual turmoil.” Sister Mercy paused a moment before she went on. “And it’s no wonder you’ve felt some confusion of thought with the way that Dr. Scott did his best to upset you. If you ask me, the fault for our poor doomed brother’s fall into sin lies completely on that man’s shoulders. He has surely been filling the boy’s head with lies all the time he was supposed to be treating his burns.”

Gabrielle mashed her lips tightly together. She dared not say a word in the doctor’s defense even though she felt he was being misjudged. The strange feelings that even the mention of the doctor’s name brought out in her couldn’t be trusted to words.

Sister Mercy didn’t seem to notice as she kept talking. “I suppose we can only say good riddance to the both of them. Our former brother will get what he deserves in the world and you don’t have to worry about that doctor bothering you anymore. He won’t be showing his face around here again. Elder Caleb has made sure of that.”

So added to Gabrielle’s grief over Nathan being lost to her forever was the thought that she would never see the doctor again. She tried to be glad, to know it was what the Lord intended. As she had told Dr. Scott, their paths had taken their separate turns and were now leading away from one another.

One day followed another, and as she went about her assigned chores, she kept telling herself it was for the best. She could put the unsettling feelings the doctor had awakened in her mind aside and pull close the quiet peace of the simple, uncluttered life of the Believer.

But it wasn’t that easy. Although it had been almost a month since she’d seen the doctor, his face was still as clear before her as if he were standing in front of her. His dark eyes challenged her to face the questions she dared not even allow to surface in her mind. And time would never make her forget the warmth that had rushed through her when his lips had covered hers. Even thinking about it made her insides soften until she thought her heart might melt like butter sitting in the sun.

Gabrielle shook her wanton thoughts away and bent back down to her work. School had been out for some time. Gabrielle had been assigned to first one duty and then another. This week she was in the strawberry patch. The crop promised to be bountiful. Already the sisters had put up more than two hundred jars of the sweet preserves. Some they would save for their own table, but the rest would be sold to those of the world when the brethren went out on one of their trading trips.

As Gabrielle straightened up to rest her back for a moment, she was grateful to be working out in the warm sunshine on such a beautiful day. The trees were leaved out and the grass was lush and green. The white blossoms of their apple trees had given way to small apple buds. Everywhere she looked things were growing and promising nature’s bounty.

It always seemed something of a miracle the way the bleakness of winter could so quickly become the full promise of spring and early summer. Gone were their worries of making it through the winter after their barn had burned. Already the ground was beginning to yield up its harvest, and it would continue until winter brought its cold back, months from now.

Here in the strawberry patch, she and five other sisters were filling basket after basket of the red plump berries. Scattered among them were several young sisters helping to pick or to fetch new containers when one was full.

“Is your basket full, Sister ’Brielle?”

Gabrielle’s eyes settled on the little girl. It was the first time she’d been on the same duty as Becca since the school term had ended. Becca’s face was flushed with the heat of the sunshine. She looked very tired.

“Yea, Becca.” Gabrielle picked out one of the large ripe berries and held it out to Becca. “Why don’t you eat this one?”

“Sister Sadie says the baskets won’t fill if we put the berries in our mouths.” Becca took the strawberry from Gabrielle and laid it back in the basket.

“She wouldn’t care if you ate one.”

Becca shook her head and turned away. Gabrielle watched her carry the basket to the end of the patch. She moved as though each step took a special effort, and Gabrielle felt the worry spring up inside her. She had been checking on Becca every night even though the child no longer shed tears at bedtime. Now Becca went to bed and lay still and quiet till morning. When Gabrielle spoke to her, Becca answered with as few words as possible. She seemed to have gathered a cloud around her that kept everyone else away.

Gabrielle had asked Sister Mercy’s permission to take the child to see her mother, but Sister Mercy had refused. “It’s best this way, Sister Gabrielle. The child is growing accustomed to our ways. You yourself say Sister Becca no longer cries at night. In a few days she will be as happy as any of the other children.”

But Gabrielle could only wish Becca was still weeping. Tears would be easier to deal with than Becca’s silent misery.

Gabrielle bent down and began filling the new basket with berries. She silently offered up a prayer as she had many times in the past days that Sister Esther would return from her duty at the mill soon.

That night when they went to the evening meal, Becca was once again missing. But this time when Gabrielle returned to look in their sleeping room, the child was lying in her bed. She had folded the cover back neatly as she had been taught and lined her shoes at the foot of the bed, but she wore the same dress stained by the day’s work in the strawberry patch.

“Becca, are you sick?” The child’s face was red against the white of the pillowcase, and she stared up at Gabrielle with glassy eyes. Even before Gabrielle touched her she knew the child’s fever was high. Still the heat of her forehead surprised Gabrielle. The child had no ordinary illness.

Becca turned her head to look at Gabrielle. “’Brielle, I see spots.” She lifted her hand as if to catch one of the spots and then dropped it heavily back down.

“Oh my dear little one, why didn’t you tell me you were ill?” Tears pushed at the back of Gabrielle’s eyes, and she wanted to gather the child up to her breast and hold her tight.

“I had to pick the strawberries. Sister Sadie said so,” Becca said. She grabbed at Gabrielle’s arm. “But now I’m tired. Can you make the bed stop going around, ’Brielle, so I can go to sleep?”

“The bed’s not moving, sweetheart.”

“But it is,” Becca whispered. She touched her lips with her tongue but the moisture was gone at once. “It’s pushing me up at the ceiling. I don’t like it, ’Brielle.”

“I’ll kneel here and say a prayer. Maybe that will stop it.”

“Are you praying for me, ’Brielle?”

“Yes, dear.” Gabrielle kept her hand on the little girl’s cheek as she shut her eyes and begged the Eternal Father to take the fever from Becca.

She looked up when Becca moaned. “My head hurts, ’Brielle. My head hurts so bad.”

“I’ll go get someone to help you, Becca.” Gabrielle started up off her knees, but Becca reached for her.

“Don’t leave me alone, ’Brielle. I’m scared.” Becca clutched Gabrielle’s hand. “I know Mama’s waiting for me up there in heaven, but I’m still scared.”

“You’re going to be all right, Becca. We’ll send for a doctor.”

“The man who held me by the fire said he was a doctor. I liked him.”

“He’ll come help you now. You don’t have to be scared, little one.”

Becca shut her eyes, but she didn’t turn loose of Gabrielle’s hand.

Gabrielle knelt by the bed again. One of the children would be back soon. She would send her for help. She couldn’t leave Becca alone.

Sister Mercy came looking for Gabrielle first. “You were not at the evening meal,” she said as she came into the room.

Gabrielle whispered a quick amen and stood up. “Sister Becca is very ill, Sister Mercy. I dared not leave her alone. I was waiting for one of the children to return so that I could send for you.”

Sister Mercy was all business as she came to the child’s bed. She examined the child with the practiced thoroughness of one who had cared for many children through all sorts of illnesses. She looked up at Gabrielle and said, “We must move Sister Becca out of here to a separate room at once.”

“What do you think it is?”

“That is hard to say. Many sicknesses carry with them a fever, but we must do what we can to keep whatever it is from spreading to any of the other little sisters.”

Sister Mercy turned her eyes back to Becca. Gently she smoothed the child’s fine hair back from her forehead. “Rest easy, Sister Becca. We are going to move you to another room where it will be quieter while you get well, my child.”

Gabrielle gently scooped up the child into her arms. Becca’s body burned against her. “We will take her to the sickroom,” Sister Mercy said as she gathered up the covers from Becca’s bed.

Once Sister Mercy had the bed ready in the sickroom, Gabrielle laid Becca down. Sister Mercy quickly lit candles to light up the small room. Then she pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. Concern filled her eyes as she studied the child. “I wish we could somehow shut out sickness from our families as we have other worldly ills.” She raised her eyes to Gabrielle. “Run, fetch her a clean nightdress so she’ll be more comfortable.”

Gabrielle hadn’t gone two steps before Becca cried out. “’Brielle, where are you? You promised to stay with me. ’Brielle?”

“Shh, little sister. Sister Gabrielle is here with you.” Sister Mercy stood up and motioned Gabrielle back to the bedside. “You stay. I’ll get the nightdress and send someone for Sister Helen to mix some herbs to treat the child’s fever.”

Sister Mercy left the room quietly, and Gabrielle sat down by the bed. Becca’s breathing was so soft and shallow Gabrielle might have thought she had fallen asleep except for her wide-open eyes. Then she called again. “’Brielle, where are you?”

“I am here, Becca.” Gabrielle moved closer to her and took hold of the child’s hand.

“I’m so hot, ’Brielle. Why am I so hot? Have you put me beside the stove?”

“You have a fever, little one. Sister Mercy has gone to find some medicine powders to help you. Why don’t you close your eyes and try to sleep? When you wake up, you may feel better.”

“I wish Mama could be here. She used to sing me songs and tell me stories when I was sick.”

“I could sing to you.”

Becca shook her head a little. “It wouldn’t be the same. Mama knew which songs were my favorites without me even having to tell her.”

“Your mama will be here tomorrow, Becca. I promise.” Gabrielle wasn’t sure how she’d do it, but somehow she’d make them let Sister Esther come.

After Sister Mercy returned and they’d gotten Becca into the nightdress, Gabrielle said, “Don’t you think it would be well for us to send for Sister Esther?”

She expected Sister Mercy to disagree, but instead Sister Mercy looked long at the child before she said, “I’ll have Elder Caleb send someone for her at once. I fear you are right in thinking the child has not accustomed herself to the Believer’s life. The sight of her mother might be a comfort to her.” Sister Mercy put her hand on Becca’s forehead again for a moment. When she looked back up at Gabrielle, her eyes were sad. “It is not a time to deny the child.”

“Can you ask the elder to send for a doctor as well? Dr. Scott’s cabin is nearby, isn’t it? It wouldn’t take long for someone to fetch him.”

Sister Mercy’s back stiffened at the mention of the doctor, but she only said, “We’ll wait for Sister Helen.”

Sister Helen needed only a moment’s look and touch before she opened the small parcel of medicines she carried and selected a brownish powder. She mixed it into a bit of water and said, “Be a big girl and drink it all up.”

Becca looked at Sister Helen and clamped her lips shut. Gabrielle raised Becca’s head with one hand and took the glass from Sister Helen. “It might make the bed stop spinning, little one.”

Gabrielle tipped the glass up until the liquid touched Becca’s lips. The child let it dribble into her mouth and then swallowed. After Gabrielle eased her back down on the pillow, Becca pushed at the covers on her. “My blanket is all bumpy and scratchy, ’Brielle.”

Gabrielle folded the cover back away from her face. “There, there, sweet child. It’s just the fever making you feel so odd. Close your eyes and try to rest.”

“All right, ’Brielle. I’ll try.”

“It could be scarlet fever,” Sister Helen said softly. “The potion I gave her might cool her fever, but it doesn’t always work with these kinds of fevers.”